


It Is No Secret Moths Are Drawn To Flames (Sometimes Too Blindly)

by Iamasortofvillain



Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:55:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25170481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamasortofvillain/pseuds/Iamasortofvillain
Summary: Tell me about running and tripping and falling and failing and slicing myself open with the broken pieces of the only thing you ever loved. Tell me about blood and don't mop it up. Don't ignore it. And don't insult me with a bandage.(Marianne and Heloise meet again and it's everything they ever wanted, and it's nothing like they imagined and it's pain and blood and war and love like theirs is not to be toyed with. It is not something to make the gods jealous of).
Relationships: Héloïse & Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Héloïse/Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	It Is No Secret Moths Are Drawn To Flames (Sometimes Too Blindly)

**Author's Note:**

> And you know this all must come to an end, (to it's painful, sure end) but the wheels keep turning and you keep falling and she keeps burning and (there is nothing either of you can do)

i.

A breath of pure relief comes with the horrible horrible (horrible) realization (Marianne doesn't understand) and she stares, open and lost and so damn scared.  
(This cannot be).

(She had told herself a hundred, a thousand times. This – this cannot be).

Heloise is still beautiful, (so so beautiful), even after all these years. She is a littering, tall, hard-eyed woman and (Heloise Heloise Heloise) (she loves her still too soft. Too lovely. Too wild. She can bearly breathe).

(Heloise is a force of nature – deeper than the ocean. Hotter than fire).

Marianne never stood a chance and she wants to cry she wants to laugh she wants to run and run and run.

(It is too late now to do anything but stare).

//

Marianne's chest tightens when she calls her name (wrong, wrong name. she knows it).

She says her name (wrong, wrong name – she knows it). Heloise Heloise Heloise. She says her name like a prayer. Like something holy. (Like something damned).

Light is stained glass in front of her, cut and broken and Marianne thinks that she must be dreaming.

(this is heaven. This is hell. This is everything she dreamed of and this is wrong. This is wrongwrongwrong. This could never be).

Heloise's eyes are bright and fierce and everything like old times. Her mouth curls at the corners, something like her old self, (and nothing like Maeianne remembers). The open bratty smile is not there. There is no cheek. No childish joy. Instead, her smile is small and careful and hard, lines pulling at the corners. Marianne's heart sinks. (Heloise was never careful. Motherhood must be a scary scary thing to make this wild creature into a careful woman).

Still, she says her name (her old name. A wrong name).

"Heloise".

She is watching her and she's falling falling falling and (she is waiting for the sweet nothing. She knows it. She's been through this a hundred times already. First, there is her face. Lovely and strange and exactly like she remembered her the last time she laid eyes on her. Then – there is nothing. It isn't a dream and she will never see her again).

But this time it's different.

she has many questions. She wants to know everything. Heloise is looking at her open and scared and pleading, so Marianne keeps quiet.

Instead of talking, she pulls Heloise to her and kisses her long (kisses her hard. Kisses her scared).

Someone is talking, speaking through honey and fire and distance, and everything is muffled and Marianne is not a believer but this time she wonderes if she believes in angels.  
//

ii.

Heloise's chest tightens when she hears her old name because that angry girl is gone (she is lost in crooked streets, under the hot sun, between foreign words and loud shouts and heavy dresses).

(She is something different now. Something new).

Marianne says her name, voice small and confused and Heloise knows they both must be very different to the young girls living in each other's memories but oh how she missed her.

She turns so she’s facing Marianne, her breath like salt (like tears, like regret)

“It has been so lonely. It is so lonely,” and Heloise brushes a thumb across sharp cheekbone, resta your forehead against Marianne's shoulder.

She shuts her eyes and tries to remember the exact shade of blue of her daughter's eyes.

//

(Sometimes, Heloise thinks she had died at the shores of Brittany, in the big (big) cold house – the house her mother never meant for her to make her home. Marianne had kissed her goodbye on soft sheets and Heloise is glad her child's eyes never saw the horror of the French island. The horror of true love.

(The horror she herself inflicted with soft hands and delicate touches and warm kisses and she hate herself for leaving and never turning back).  
//

iii.

she is pretty and hopeful and young – younger than Marianne first thought her. she must be thirty-five or so, and Marianne feels she is hundreds of years younger than herself and Heloise can never see the world the way that she does (she can never see herself the way that Marianne does).

It's uncomfortable, her glittering innocence. The firm set of eyes (bright and sharp like knives) now shine with anger and something like love (something like death). The words come slowly at first, and it seems so strange, so silly (they are standing, for god's sake, in the middle of the theater and dear lord, maybe this is what insanity feels like). Slowly, the words being to flow into each other, they become more and more difficult to remember, to read and Marianne is quite suddenly not knowing what it is they are talkong about. Heloise's eyes are dark now, and hot and Marianne was born simpley to be destroyed and she says her name over and over and over again and it burns. She asks question and she doesn't want to hear the answers. She kisses Heloise, crying and smiling and she wants to stop as white hot pain burns her lips, but Heloise Heloise HeloiseHeloiseHeloise. (Marianne doesn't remember much about the island but she remembers everything about her and it hurts).

//

All her dreams are identical and she dies every time.

"I have seen your portrait. The artist didn't make you justice".

"They rarely do".

Her voice is stained with music, and Marianne's eyes are wide and terrified. Her hands are trembling. She begs for her life and Heloise smiles and smiles and smiles (pretty and full of promises to save her).

She wants to push Heloise away. She wants to go back to her miserable darkness. Instead, she pulls her close and kisses her.

Heloise laughs.  
//

iv.

Heloise loves her more than she remembers words for. She loves her wild and rough and full of bitterness.

She says nothing and she means everything and Heloise knows it.  
Memories, she discovers, flow like blood (warm and thrumming and her heart still beats just as strong as before). //

v.

Marianne kisses her sloppy and broken, young and scared, and like it's their first time.

She kisses Heloise and she tastes wine and ashes and she hopes Heloise doesn't know the metal of blood, the sting of spirits.

Heloise smiles and it cannot last forever and (Marianne wants to scream and scream and scream because this shouldn't be happening. This cannot be happening. They are not supposed to do that and)

(God, she would die before letting Heloise go again).

//

vi.

In the end, of course, she knows she must let her go.

//

vii.

Time moves like liquid.

Heloise makes a tiny groaning noise when the sun reaches her eyes and she buries her face in Marianne's shoulder.

Marianne's heart leaps and she thinks (not for the first time) how is she so calm when her hands itch and itch and itch to touch her. To have Heloise's skin under her palms.

Heloise curls into her, all soft arms and golden hair and wide smile and she is so so lovely Marianne makes it her goal to repeat this wonderful stillness.

//

Marianne has forever to kiss the stinging from Heloise's palms, to love her, to love her, to love her.

//

"A day will come and you will leave me, only this time the fates will strike cruel and jealous and I will never see you again".

Heloise makes a small humming noise and presses herself closer to Marianne's warmth. She breathes soft, her breath is hot and sour and Marianne loves her she loves her she loves her.

(Heloise is strong and angry and familiar. She is different. She is a mother. Marianne can see the end in her bright bright loving eyes).

"The gods will get jealous".

"And jealous they get. Why, let them".

"Gods strike horrible when provoked, and I will lose you. I will lose you again".

Marianne kisses her cheek and Heloise wants to arch into her touch (she is so scared).

"The gods will have to fight me," Heloise's whisper is all fire and war and violence.

(She reminds herself to stay strong).

"oh," Marianne says quiet and sad and already gone.

She is already gone.

//

viii.

loss feels like a gap under Marianne's ribs sometimes, and she gasps with the wholeness of it

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you everybody for reading my little incoherent stories.  
> English is not my first language, so any misspellings are my own fault. I promise to do better next time.  
> visit my Tumblr @ love-jesus-but-i-drink-a-little.tumblr.com


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